


Comes In Threes

by Unpretty



Series: Sorrowful and Immaculate Hearts [33]
Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-29
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-10-18 13:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17582051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unpretty/pseuds/Unpretty
Summary: Felicity Smoak has a bad track record with billionaires.





	Comes In Threes

The Atom frowned, his arms swinging as he spun around to double-check the room. " _You're_ not supposed to be on the computer," he said. Green Arrow was clicking the mouse rapidly and furiously, accomplishing nothing. "Where's Overwatch?"

Green Arrow pushed the mouse and keyboard away from him in disgust. "Apparently she thinks I don't appreciate her enough—"

"You don't."

"—so she started threatening to find someone who would, we argued, it was a whole thing." He sighed, unlocking his phone and holding it up. "Look at this. She took _my_ private jet just so I'd be able to see she was going to Gotham."

Atom's eyes widened. "She's going to Gotham?"

"According to this flight plan she is."

"She can't go to Gotham." He started frantically moving to grab his keys and wallet off the desk before remembering that he'd just walked in, and hadn't brought those. "We have to stop her!"

Green Arrow was on his feet, trying to stop Atom from moving so much or intercept his frantic back-and-forth. "What? What's wrong?"

Atom put his hands on Green Arrow's shoulders. "She's going to _Gotham_ ," he said, with deep urgency. "She's going to see _Bruce Wayne_."

Green Arrow had put his hands on Atom's shoulders to match his intensity. "Okay?" His confusion stripped some of the intensity out of the whole situation.

"Don't you know what he _is?_ "

* * *

"Felicity! Wait!" Oliver Queen skidded to a halt in the tiled hallway behind her. She spun on her heel right outside the door to Bruce Wayne's office, fire in her eyes.

"Don't try to stop me," she said.

"Just wait," he said. "There are things you don't know."

She frowned, and stepped a little closer. "About what?" she said, trying to figure out if this was somehow related to 'work'.

Oliver hesitated. "I'm not actually sure," he admitted, and she relaxed with a roll of her eyes. "We didn't really get a chance to talk about it." They'd spent most of the trip arguing about a guy they'd seen at the airport, who they both agreed looked familiar though they couldn't place why. This was, in retrospect, irresponsible.

"We."

Oliver looked to his right, where no one stood. He looked back to Felicity, and gestured to the nothing. "Ray," he explained. "I think he's still busy with the cops."

" _Cops?_ "

"They're having a disagreement about whether he should be getting a ticket for the way he parked down there."

Felicity narrowed her eyes. "The cop wasn't going to give him a ticket."

"No."

"I'm going in there," she decided.

Oliver grabbed her arm as she tried to turn. "Felicity—"

"No," she scolded, holding out a single finger of rebuke, and Oliver shrank back. "I am going in there, and every billionaire who keeps a salmon ladder in his office can just wait in the hall. Because that's stupid. Keeping exercise equipment in your office is stupid, and we all know it's stupid. You don't even have a shower in there."

"This conversation took a turn," he said.

"I am going to walk into that office," she said, pointing to the door, "and break whatever _monkey's paw curse_ it is I have on me," she said, gesturing with splayed fingers to her face, "that says that every time I meet an eligible bachelor, he'll have a billion dollars, but he'll spend it all on body armor and weird underground lairs."

"Felicity," he tried again, but she was already walking into Bruce's office, a swish to her ponytail and her chin held high.

"Why didn't you stop her!" Ray demanded, rushing up behind him.

"I tried!" Oliver insisted as they followed behind her.

There was no one behind Bruce's desk. Felicity paused, and the two men nearly ran into her.

"Over here," came a strained voice.

Felicity stiffened. She stood straighter, her mouth a thin line. She turned away from the source of the voice, all the way around to look at Oliver.

"Is he on a salmon ladder?" she whispered shakily. The two men said nothing, and she shut her eyes in pained resignation. Her voice was small and high-pitched. "Someone please tell me if there is a billionaire in this office flexing his naked abs in my direction so I can leave before he shows me his weird suit."

"I tried to warn you," Ray whispered.

"Miss Smoak?"

Slowly, Felicity turned to face her fear.

Bruce Wayne was sprawled on the floor. One of his legs was bent, but the other stuck straight out with his entire foot turned flat outward like a ragdoll. His suit was rumpled, his tie undone, and there was a folded cloth over his eyes. He had one wrist against his forehead, and his other hand held his phone aloft in her direction.

"Mr. Wayne?"

"Help."

"Are you okay?" she asked, inching closer.

"I have an hour to give final approval on this project," he said, "but they sent me the proposal as an email attachment. Every time I try to open the PDF, it just tries to upload it to Dropbox. I didn't know I even had a Dropbox. I don't think I do. I think a teen looked at my phone and now apps are manifesting on it. Halfway through the upload it throws an error and then stops. I've been trying to open this PDF for three hours. I am become Sisyphus, rolling the rock of this PDF up the hill of the cloud. That's not even where I want the rock. I just want to look at the rock on my phone. I don't know when rocks got so complicated. It's not even—they're downstairs. They could have just brought the rock. There was no reason to get a hill involved in this."

"I feel like this metaphor got weird."

"It usually does."

"Couldn't you use your computer?" she asked.

"I would have to get up."

"Why are you on the floor?"

"My back hurt," he said. He abruptly lifted both his feet off the ground and up toward the ceiling, loafers upside-down. "This helps."

He was still holding out his phone.

Suddenly Ray was throwing his arm out in front of her to stop her from moving forward, putting himself between Felicity and Bruce with a serious expression.

"Don't do it, Felicity," he said.

Bruce nudged the cloth off his face enough that he could squint at the gathering in his office, brow furrowed. His legs were still straight upward.

"If you help him now," Ray said, "he will never stop calling you."

She pushed his arm away from her.

"And always at three in the morning," Ray continued. "Every single time, the middle of the night. Last week he had me up until five trying to help him with font kerning issues. _Kerning_."

"Hello, Ray," Bruce said from the floor, finally dropping his legs, toes pointing directly outward like a stick figure.

"Hello, Mr. Wayne," Ray said.

"Ray, we've talked about this."

"Bruce," Oliver said with a half-wave.

"Oliver."

"Get that font thing sorted out?" Oliver asked.

"No," Bruce said, lowering his phone. "I ended up just paying a guy to make a new font."

"You said you couldn't do that because you wanted that specific one," Ray protested.

"Yeah," Bruce said. "I found the same guy. Only cost a couple thousand to have him fix it."

"You paid _what_?" Felicity said.

"It's a good font," Bruce said, gesturing with the phone still in his hand. "The A's have this—"

"Don't let him start about the A's," Ray interrupted.

"Let me see your phone," Felicity said, moving around Ray to get to Bruce. Bruce offered it up to her gratefully.

"You're going to regret that," Ray said.

Oliver looked at Ray. "So the thing we needed to warn her about was…"

"He's an IT nightmare," Ray confirmed.

"An asshole."

"Basically."

"I could have told you that," Oliver said. "You know, when we were kids I had to go to the hospital because of him."

"That wasn't my fault," Bruce said.

"He tricked me into licking a toad."

"I said that some people think you can lick toads to get high," Bruce said, bringing the cloth back down over his eyes. "You're the one who interpreted that to mean you should try."

"Any kid would have done the same," Oliver said.

"I never did," said Bruce.

"I wouldn't have," Ray said. "That's gross."

"You're the only person who would take that as a dare," Felicity said, trying to hand Bruce his phone back. "Here's your PDF." Bruce reached blindly upward, and she had to place the phone directly into his palm. "Should we see about getting you something for your headache?"

"I don't have a headache," he said, taking the cloth off his head to look at his phone.

"You had a cool cloth over your eyes," Felicity said.

"I thought just laying on the floor would look weird." His thumb scrolled through the PDF. "This is all wrong."

"Did I get the wrong file?" she asked, bending down to try and see the screen.

"It's the right file, it's just hideous."

"Bad kerning?" Ray suggested.

"That's the least of their problems," Bruce said. "I think they made this in an old version of Word."

"That's not so bad," Oliver said.

"Of course you'd think so."

"What's the proposal for?" Felicity asked.

"App thing."

"Definitely reject," she nodded.

"He hasn't even read it," Oliver said.

"He doesn't have to."

"I like her," Bruce said. "Do you want to make me an app?"

"Don't do it," Ray said.

"What were you even going to hire her for?" Oliver asked.

"Was I going to hire you?" Bruce asked Felicity. "I thought we were having dinner."

"I thought we could talk about hiring me over dinner," Felicity said.

"This is awkward," Ray said.

Bruce looked between all assembled from his position on the floor. "Were you using me to make your boyfriend jealous."

"Only a little," Felicity said.

"Next time you should say so," he said. "Here, I'll just…"

"No, it's fine," she said as he tried to get up. "I think it's too late."

Bruce kicked his legs up, rolled all the way back up to his shoulders and then over to stand. Felicity leaned away as Bruce brushed himself off. He stood up straight, and Felicity thought about the fact that she was in an expensive office surrounded by billionaires almost a foot taller than she was.

There was a time when this would have been the ultimate fantasy scenario.

Still kinda was, if she was honest.

"You said that out loud," Oliver said.

"What?" she said.

"The thing about the fantasy."

"Oh." She clasped her hands in front of her, turning red.

"It's fine," Bruce said. "I get that a lot."

"He does," Oliver confirmed.

"I don't," Ray said.

"It's just him," Oliver said.

"Sorry," Bruce said.

"I think it's because you seem gentle," Felicity suggested, making Oliver scowl.

Bruce cocked his head sideways, and she blushed harder. "Thank you."

"Now that Felicity's accomplished everything she set out to do," Oliver began.

"Have I?"

"Has she?"

"I think maybe we should all get our of your hair," he finished.

"I thought we were going to dinner," Bruce said.

"We could all go to dinner," Felicity said.

"You could help me with this email thing," Bruce said to Ray.

"I'm not hungry," Ray said.

Everyone in the room noticed at once the motion occurring outside Bruce's office, where the employees were rushing to look at the street.

"What's happening?" Oliver asked.

Bruce leaned to look out an outside window. "Looks like Riddler hijacked some billboards," he said, disinterested.

Felicity covered her mouth with her hands. "I almost forgot, this city has real supervillains!"

Oliver gave her a sharp look. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"I need to go right now immediately," Ray said. "I'll—we'll just—bye." He darted out of Bruce's office without another word.

They stared at each other in silence.

"Scared of the Riddler," Bruce said finally.

"Yes," Oliver said immediately.

"Terrified," Felicity agreed.

"You're going to have to go make sure he's okay."

"Yes."

"We didn't want to seem rude."

"I completely understand. Let me know if he's okay, we can do this some other time."

"Thank you so much," Felicity said, bending a little at the waist as she edged toward the door.

"Don't _bow_ ," Oliver said as he opened it for her.

"I—I was being _respectful_."

"Since when are _you_ —"

Bruce watched them rush toward the stairwell. After a moment, he poked his head out of the door of his office. "You know that's going to be on YouTube in about five minutes," he called to the crowd pressed against the windows.

"Somebody's gotta be first upload, boss!" a woman called back.

"You have a cooking channel, Megan."

"Stop trying to pigeonhole me!"

"I'm going back to the floor," Bruce muttered, going back into his office. "Everyone knows this one anyway, it's the cabin of a—he's going to hijack a fucking plane." He turned back around to head for the elevators.

"Don't go in there," he said as he passed someone about to enter the stairwell. "I think Oliver Queen and his girlfriend might be getting naked."

"Ew!"


End file.
